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Turn up the heat
on your competitors
Imagine having a plan to pre-empt your most dangerous competitors. A specific plan, covering sales, marketing, new products and other activities, that plays on their weaknesses and boosts your market share at their expense.
Almost all companies underestimate their competition. Year after year, more than 90% of businesses aim to grow faster than their market. And year after year, they fall short of their target.
But underlying their targets is a hidden assumption: to grow faster than your market, you have to take share from your competitors. Well, I’ve read literally hundreds of business plans over the years. In all that time, I’ve only seen four which backed up their sales forecast by saying who they would take share from - and how.
You can learn a lot by standing in a competitor’s shoes. You already know more about your competitors than you think. It’s just that the knowledge isn’t in one place. Every day, customers tell your salespeople about competitors. Every day, your marketing teams are reviewing competitor materials. Maybe your R&D teams are taking apart competitor products. Your finance people are reading about them in the business pages. There’s plenty of information. The challenge is to act on it. And that’s where it helps to think like your competitor thinks.
Getting under the skin of your competitors needn’t be boring or difficult. You don’t need to commission huge amounts of data. You don’t need a team of analysts to produce a 200-page report. And you certainly don’t need to rustle through the waste bins outside your competitor’s headquarters!
What you DO need to do is gather a multifunctional team together for an ‘Outsmarting Competitors’ Workshop. This includes a review of the market and how it’s changing, a look at the strategic options all from the competitor’s perspective, and then a more detailed planning session.
“This is a great process,” said the sales director of one client. “I can’t believe how much we’ve achieved in such a short time.”
Make your planning fast, practical and enjoyable. Read a case study or contact me to learn more about Competitor War Games.
But don’t wait… after all, your competitor wants to outsmart YOU!
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